Sime~Gen - KeyBooks

Long Way Round : Chasing Shadows Across the World
by Ewan McGregor, Charley Boorman

List Price:

$26.95

Story ideas abound in this nonfiction adventure.

Poring over a map of the world at home one quiet Saturday afternoon, Ewan McGregor - actor and self-confessed bike nut - noticed that it was possible to ride all the way round the world, with just one short hop across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska. It was a revelation he couldn't get out of his head. So he picked up the phone and called Charley Boorman, his best friend, fellow actor and bike enthusiast. 'Charley,' he said. 'I think you ought to come over for dinner...' more

One of Jim Henson's finest hours was the Storyteller series that aired on HBO in 1987. As with his other non-Muppet creations (Labyrinth), Henson fills the screen with wonderful creatures that have a wisp of a J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy. Half of the eight-part series was adapted from Greek myths by Anthony Minghella . . . more

Jim Henson's The Storyteller - Greek Myths (1997)

List Price:

$19.94

Leaving Lancaster County
by Teresa Phillips

List Price:

$12.99

Synopsis
Miriam Ruth Yoder is an Amish lady who yearns to travel to Africa as a missionary nurse. It takes a letter from the Governor and a mysterious lady to make her family see that God has given her a talent. She must decide to use or lose it. Having Doctor Charles Lambert walk into her life doesn't help matters. For he is a Baptist medical missionary who has his eyes set right on her. This handsome man has found the key to turn her heart. It is through him that she learns that life is worth taking risks even when you could fall. For you have to fall before you can walk. Sometimes the good person wins even when they fall.

Amazon.com
"What if" scenarios are often suspect. They are sometimes thinly veiled tales of the gospel according to the author, taking on the claustrophobic air of a personal fantasia that can't be shared. Such is not the case with Philip Roth's tour de force, The Plot Against America. It is a credible, fully-realized picture of what could happen anywhere, at any time, if the right people and circumstances come together.
The Plot Against America explores a wholly imagined thesis and sees it through to the end: Charles A. Lindbergh defeats FDR for the Presidency in 1940. Lindbergh, the
more

The Plot Against America : A Novel
by Philip Roth

List Price:

$26.00

Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
by Jim Marrs (Author)

List Price:

$15.00

Check today's discount.

Conspiracies, their beliefs and histories.

If you have an idea for a novel plot involving a conspiracy - STUDY this book. Read it like a UFO book - some people believe this stuff. Convince your readers your characters are right.

Disgrace
by J. M. Coetzee

List Price:

$13.00

This best seller has the longest amazon review I've seen in a while. It has drawn over 200 customer reviews, some long and detailed. Want to write a best-seller? Look this one over carefully.

Allison Pearson's debut novel, I Don't Know How She Does It, is a rare and beautiful hybrid: a devastatingly funny novel that's also a compelling fictional world. You want to climb inside this book and inhabit it. However, you might find it pretty messy once you're in there. Narrator Kate Reddy is the manager of a hedge fund and mother of two small children. The book opens with an emblematic scene as Kate "distresses" a store-bought mince pie to make it appear homemade. Her days are measured in increments of minutes and even seconds; her fund stays organized but her house and family are falling apart. The book is more

I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother
by Allison Pearson

List Price:$23.00

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Languageby Steven Pinker

Look inside this book

List Price:

$15.00

One important premise of the Sime~Gen Universe rests on a theory of how the human brain generates language. Reading a book like this one together with Bel Canto: A Novel can crystalize all the many things you have to say in your fiction.

Just click and read the free sample to see what I mean.
In this classic study, the world's leading expert on language and the mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about languages: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it envolved. With wit, erudition, and deft use it everyday examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution like web spinning in spiders or sonar bats. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America.

Bel Canto: A Novel by Ann Patchett

Look inside this book

List Price:

$13.95

In an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. His hosts hope that Mr. Hosokawa can be persuaded to build a factory in their Third World backwater. Alas, in the opening sequence, just as the accompanist kisses the soprano, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry.

Among the hostages are not only Hosokawa and Roxane Coss, the American soprano, but an assortment of Russian, Italian, and French diplomatic types.

Let's Roll: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage
by Lisa Beamer, Ken Abraham (Contributor)
This is the book about the passengers who brought down the plane headed for the White House on 9/11.

List Price: $24.99 (discounted way down!)
I could write 5 novels with the material in this book.

Theme: patriotism is it a good thing?
Contrast/compare Let's Roll and Invasion and you'd have a huge interstellar SERIES of novels.

Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists Criminals & Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores
by Michelle Malkin

List Price: $27.95

This is not the Michelle Malkin of Star Trek Fanzine fame - I saw her on TV and she's too young. But this book is full of writing plot ideas! Just chock FULL! And click here to buy and get a big discount. JL

Friedman, the well-traveled New York Times foreign-affairs columnist, peppers The Lexus and the Olive Tree with stories that illustrate his central theme: that globalization--the Lexus--is the central organizing principle of the post-cold war world, even though many individuals and nations resist by holding onto what has traditionally mattered to them--the olive tree.

The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization
by Thomas L. Friedman

List Price: $15.00
Read an excerpt - get some great ideas for building alien worlds. Actually, this thesis reminds me of C. J. Cherryh's FOREIGNER TRILOGY.

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General Fiction & Other Reading

Updated on Thursday October 28, 2004.

Among the hostages are not only Hosokawa and Roxane Coss, the American soprano, but an assortment of Russian, Italian, and French diplomatic types.